Manufacturing plants use different types of raw materials for manufacturing documents for customers in accordance with the customer's intended application. Customers interact with salespeople to determine and select the raw materials to be used by the manufacturing plants to produce the customer's documents, such as forms, labels, label/form combinations and paper rolls. One component of the customer's forms and labels is the pressure sensitive raw material. Pressure sensitive raw materials are offered in a wide variety of facestock, adhesive, and liner combinations from multiple vendors. Selecting the correct raw material code, which cross references to a raw material vendor's raw material specifications, for a customer's application can be difficult, complicated, and time consuming. Many times, the customer spends a large amount of time and effort selecting a raw material code only to find out at the time of delivery that the selected raw material will not be acceptable for the intended application. This is very frustrating for the customer and is oftentimes costly to the salesperson and manufacturing plant in terms of goodwill and financial expense associated with the customer. Thus, there is a need in the art for a method of enabling a customer to quickly select the correct raw material code for a document such as a form or label to be manufactured.
In many instances, the customer does not know the particulars of each vendor's raw material and does not have the time necessary to gain the knowledge. If the customer desires to know the vendor's raw material specifications, a time consuming amount of research must be completed. Further, the best raw material for a particular application varies based on the print method, adhesive type selected, minimum application temperature for the adhesive selected, service range of the adhesive selected, and facestock type selected. It would be beneficial for all of these criteria to be available to be known by the customer prior to selection of a raw material.
Print methods include cut sheet lap joined, cut sheet laser, direct thermal, thermal transfer and impact. Adhesive type include permanent, cold temp and removable. Facestock type include paper, kimdura, 100# tag, 7 pt tag, 8 pt tag, matte litho, latex impregnated, gloss, matte chrome polyester, bright chrome polyester, clear polyester, white polyester, polyolefin and vinyl.
Additionally, the raw material codes used by the manufacturer can be complicated and difficult to remember causing the customer's order to be prone to errors. The salespeople efficiency is reduced by the errors resulting from incorrect selection of raw material type by customers and the resulting cost of returned merchandise which is unsuited for the desired application by the customer. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a mechanism of simplifying the entry of raw material codes.
Further, many times valuable technical resources and personal time is diverted from product improvements in order to provide technical assistance to the sales force. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a mechanism to reduce salespeople's use of technical resources and personnel.